Makes My Brain Hurt

We've been driving out to Yamhill-Carlton recently to pick up boxes of CSA veggies from Kookoolan Farms. Our route takes us through Newberg, Oregon, and then out to the tiny town of Carlton (which, by the way, has a place advertising a Rocky Mountain oyster feed coming up - not just their availability, but a full-on feed).

This is the same route we've been taking for weeks, and every week just before we exit the Newberg city limits the road crosses over some railroad tracks and then past a small street. The name of this street catches my eye every single time because it's so incongruous with, well, reality.

Like any street it has a sign with a name: W. North St.

Doesn't that just seem a little wrong? I mean, the straight name being two separate points of the compass? I get the fact Newberg is divided into East and West, as most towns and cities are, and this particular section lies on the west side, but it's painful to read. In fact, as a driver it's borderline distracting (or maybe it's just me and I should focus more on my driving).

And if that was all it was, perhaps I could leave it alone and not mention it, but it's not all.

See, not only is this W. North St., but it's also a one-way street. Going east. Are you kidding me?! I think my brain just exploded.

Again, I understand that's just the way it is, but I would like propose an end - not a moratorium, which implies a time limit, but an end - to naming a street a direction. It's quite common, I know, but it really has to stop. It seems like in the right situation it could blow a hole in the very fabric of reality.

If I really want to break it, I could start making a case for all the places this W. North St. that is a one-way going only east is south of, but that wouldn't be very nice.

It reminds me a little bit of a song by Sheryl Crow - My Favorite Mistake. Well, in the way that it makes my brain want to eat itself, not because it has anything to do with directions.

Wifey and I are big Sheryl fans. For me, it goes back to when we got married on Maui. A day or two before our wedding we went on a cruise out to Molokini Crater - an extinct volcano related to Haleakala, which dominates the landscape of South Maui - just off the coastline for some snorkeling. It's interesting, but what I remember the most from the trip - not that it wasn't all great - was our seemingly seasoned and gruff captain cranking up Crow's Soaking Up the Sun with the track set to repeat halfway back from the crater to the harbor. The entire boat got into the act, singing the chorus and generally having a good time. At that point, in the warm Maui sunshine, speeding over the water with my bride-to-be on my arm as we watched for sea turtles, it was just the perfect song.

From Mauiguidebook.com

Of course none of the previous paragraph has anything to do with my point here, but I wanted to write it. Hey, my blog, my rationales, right? Besides, you get the awesome picture above.

Anyway, the chorus of My Favorite Mistake goes like this:

Did you know when you go
It's the perfect ending
To the bad day I was just beginning
When you go all I know is
You're my favorite mistake

Many of you have probably heard this song multiple times and never given a second thought to the lyrics. However, the first three lines of the chorus, when you really think about them, are likely to cause a brain aneurysm - or at the least a mild seizure - if one tries to logically think about it.

She's talking about when the guy leaves it's the perfect ENDING to a day just BEGINNING? Excuse me, what? Can someone put this on a timeline and show me? Great song, but until I can fully grasp the meaning there it's forever going to be a distraction.

Sigh. I really should find more important things to worry about - not like I don't have any.